As part of the Department for Education and Skill's remodeling of the workforce agenda of 2003, the then Teacher Training Agency created a new "super teaching assistant" role that headteachers could integrate into their school organizations. This mirrored other government public service professional reforms, where there has been a conscious breakdown in the strict autonomy of the professional. An instance of the movement towards a paraprofessional teamwork approach is the emergence of the nurse practitioner who works at an advanced practice level, undertaking some of the duties previously undertaken solely by the doctor. Similarly, the new Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTA) will be capable of a broad range of roles at an advanced level previously undertaken by teaching staff, such as planning, teaching and assessing whole classes, or the management of all pupils with Special Educational Needs, the SENCO role. To ensure the quality of this newly created career level, the HLTA Status has been awarded only to those who have been assessed against the HLTA Professional Standards, modeled on the professional teaching standards. The first of these HLTA Status awards was made in April 2004. This article presents the findings of research whose aims were to evaluate the impact of obtaining HLTA Status, one year on, for a sample of this first group of HLTAs and their Headteachers.